The Clock Shadow Building is not your ordinary sustainable building. The developer came to the project team with a vision “to transform a vacant brownfield site into an environmentally sustainable building that provides a home for occupants that share a commitment to community and environmental values.”

The developer wanted a building that was a commercially viable project, repeatable in different communities, a radically sustainable building that followed the Living Building Challenge, and met the quadruple bottom line mission of economic improvement, social justice, environmental restoration, and cultural celebration. With these ambitious and unapologetic goals, the project team set off to design a one-of-a-kind building for a one-of-a-kind developer.

The project sits in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood and is inserted into a small, 4,000-square-foot site in this dense area. The four-story, 28,000-square-foot building houses a mix of non-profit organizations providing healthcare services for the neighborhood’s under-served population, as well as an artisan cheese factory and a premium ice cream store.